will you still love me tomorrow?
by nlizzette7
Summary: They were always like poetry - a little bit sad, a little bit beautiful. / A lyrical take on Chuck and Blair's story. Slightly AU, but the love is still the same. / One-shot.


_will you still love me tomorrow?_

_/_

He doesn't understand why it happens when it happens.

* * *

She's ten years old when she watches _Big Fish_ for the first time. It's magic on the screen, it's magic in the room. Serena's snoring on the pillow beside her, blonde hair tangled, blonde mind on empty. Nate's kicking a soccer ball at the wall.

And Chuck is falling in love with Blair Waldorf.

(He just doesn't know it yet.)

She bites down on her lip, and he watches her, watches the screen, watches her.

"Bass," Blair whispers as the credits roll, as the song plays, as his heart falters when her pretty pink dress slides across the fabric of his pant leg. It's basically suicide.

"Yes?" Chuck tries. No, too sweet. "Yes…" Chuck tries again, "Waldorf?"

"Did you like the movie?"

"It was fine."

She nods. "I liked it," Blair chirps.

(They say that time stops when you meet the love of your life.)

In that instant, Chuck's favorite watch breaks on his wrist.

/

"I don't think that Nate likes me that way," Blair sniffs. He's startled, uncomfortable by the little brunette in tears before him. He's thirteen.

And she's beautiful when she cries.

"Oh."

"Aren't you going to make me feel better?"

He offers her a cigarette in front of Central Park, and the way smoke looks when it kisses her bottom lip is delicious.

"You don't like liars."

/

Years later, Blair finally pulls her fingers through Chuck's hair when he follows her into a backseat, into the sweetest little nightmare. His nose skims her shoulder, and it's so intimate that he still has a hard time believing that this is real.

(She's not the queen of Constance anymore, but her throne is still embedded into his chest.)

It's a fine substitute for the human heart.

/

She gets a second boyfriend, after Nate. She's in college, and Chuck convinces himself that Basses don't come in second anyway.

But Blair and Humphrey remind him of a prince and her frog – and not in a good way.

But Blair and Humphrey remind him of a scene deleted from a movie that no one ever cared to watch.

"He knows all my favorite films," Blair says over coffee on Park. Her hair is a little wavy, her eyes are a little tired.

Chuck orders an espresso but drinks from his flask beneath the table. "I know all of your favorite films."

She doesn't argue.

"I know this, too," Chuck says, an easy palm finds her bare thigh beneath the table.

She doesn't protest.

/

(He likes to kiss her goodbye on the cheek because it's almost her neck.

Blair smells like Chanel No. 5 and instant heartbreak.)

/

They go to Paris when she ditches the unfortunate Brooklynite.

They book a flight when the air on the Upper East Side grows so thick that they both want to kill themselves.

If you ask him now, Chuck will tell you that he never did get to see the Eiffel Tower.

But the thing sure was beautiful reflected in her eyes.

/

They have sex thirteen times in one weekend.

Fourteen, if you count what happened on the balcony.

He's trying to fuck everything else out of her until there's only room left for him, but nothing ever works the way Chuck wants it to, and the world is cold on their way back to Charles de Gaulle.

"It's because we're not the people that others fall in love with," Blair reasons, applying Chanel to her lips despite the bumpy road.

He's supposed to hesitate, but he doesn't. "I fell in love with you."

He doesn't expect anything, and that's exactly what he gets. This is the last time Chuck will touch her for another year when she brushes his shoulder and whispers, "I don't want to talk anymore."

/

She gets a third boyfriend. This one comes with an accent that makes him want to puke.

This one comes with a diamond ring that looks an awful lot like the one Chuck bought for her three years ago.

/

He wears black to her wedding with Louis because he knows she'll get the joke.

"This isn't one of those things," Blair says, all dressed up in her white gown, all dressed up in her white lies.

He offers her a cigarette, but this time she doesn't take it.

"You sit at a pew, I say my vows, and then the curtains close, Chuck." She's crying, and he looks away.

(It's not that he can't handle it – it's that he knows _she _can't.)

"Alright."

"I mean it, Chuck."

"You always do."

_She never does._

His suit feels tight, and it's not really that funny anymore.

/

Six months pass, and he finds out about the divorce exactly thirteen minutes after it happens.

After all, he _is _Chuck Bass.

/

"He couldn't stand the fact that my skin doesn't remember anyone but you."

Chuck is drinking whiskey, glaring out at his city when he hears her voice. He pretends not to care.

(He's wearing the purple bowtie she likes because he knew she would come.)

"We were always like poetry, weren't we?"

Blair tries to be romantic because that's the only way she can cope with feeling so desperate.

"We were always a little bit sad."

The torture is split in half and distributed accordingly.

"We were always a little bit beautiful."

And then he makes her wait a full minute in silence before taking her against the wall, before swallowing her screams, her pleas, and everything else in between with his own tongue.

After all, he _is _Chuck Bass.

/

On their first anniversary, they're sitting in front of the ocean, her shawl is transparent, and their beach is private because that's what he likes. Salt and wind collects on her skin until he can lick it all away.

She gives him a little black box.

There's a watch inside, its face is crushed to pieces.

Blair kisses his neck, hot and effective when she drawls, "They say that time stops when you meet the love of your life."

Chuck smiles when he retorts, "It doesn't work that way, Waldorf."

The lie is unnecessary.

That's exactly how it works.

* * *

He still doesn't understand why it happened when it happened.

Maybe he's just glad it happened at all.


End file.
